Domestic violence and the lockdown

Lockdown Britain’s commentators and activists have something new to fret over: domestic abuse. Earlier this week, the charity Refuge reported a 25 per cent increase in calls to its national helpline since the lockdown first began. Visits to its website were said to be up 150 per cent on the last week in February. Since the start of the coronavirus epidemic, domestic abuse has apparently ‘soared’, with more than 25 organisations reporting an increase in their caseload.

Even before statistics from charities and campaigners were released, panic over domestic abuse was underway. Often, the very same people who had been vocal in calling for the government to implement tighter restrictions led the concern for people confined to homes with abusive parents or partners. Owen Jones moved swiftly from ‘relief’ at the announcement of Britain’s lockdown to worry that ‘all too many LGBTQ young people are now locked away with homophobic and transphobic parents, for weeks or even months’. After one week of tighter restrictions, feminist Sian Norris explained that, ‘For people with an abusive partner, lockdown means captivity’.

If coronavirus has taught us anything so far, it is surely that panic is never a good starting point for rational debate. Reacting to panic results in disastrous policymaking. Rather than plunging headlong into hysteria about domestic abuse, we need to look carefully at what’s actually going on.

Long-term trends show that rates of domestic abuse have been falling for many years. The UK’s Office for National Statistics notes that ‘the cumulative effect of small year-on-year reductions has resulted in a significantly lower prevalence of domestic abuse experienced in the last year for the year ending March 2019 compared with the year ending March 2005’.

It goes on to explain, ‘The downward trend in prevalence over time is driven by reductions in the prevalence of partner abuse, which has decreased from 6.9 per cent to 4.8 per cent over the same period. Family abuse has also followed a similar trend with a significantly lower prevalence in the year ending March 2019 (2.2 per cent) compared with the year ending March 2005 (3.4 per cent).’

This overall fall in the rates of domestic abuse comes despite a more expansive definition of the crime. The offence of controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship was introduced at the end of 2015. This shifted attention away from a focus solely on violence. Sandra Horley, chief executive of Refuge, explains that ‘domestic abuse isn’t always physical – it’s a pattern of controlling, threatening and coercive behaviour, which can also be emotional, economic, psychological or sexual’. One problem with this more all-encompassing approach is that the heated rows which form part of many relationships are no longer written-off as ‘domestics’ but can now fall under the remit of abuse.

As campaigners are quick to remind us, men are victims and not just perpetrators of domestic abuse. But, when looked at over a longer time frame, rates of domestic violence fell dramatically as women’s freedoms increased. With more opportunities to work and earn money, with the right to have their own bank accounts, take out loans and apply for credit cards, or to get benefits paid to them directly, women gained the capacity to escape abusive relationships – even if doing so still required an enormous effort. We have to put the latest panic about domestic abuse in this context of long-term decline.

It’s also worth remembering that calls to a helpline or clicks on a website tell us little about actual crime rates. They may simply show heightened awareness as a result of increased publicity. Indeed, domestic-abuse services were primed to expect an increase in calls. Local councils have been busy promoting helplines since the lockdown was first announced. On Monday, Victoria Derbyshire attracted widespread publicity for hosting her BBC show with a domestic abuse helpline number written on her hand. Even Chelsea football club have launched a campaign to help tackle domestic abuse during the coronavirus pandemic.

Central to all this awareness-raising is the fear that lockdown could ‘heighten domestic tensions’. It’s incredible that some commentators need campaigners and statistics to tell them this. Keeping people confined to their homes, perhaps with money worries, or juggling working from home with looking after young children in a cramped flat, all the while isolated from extended family and friends, places people under enormous stress. It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to recognise that this can lead to tensions mounting and tempers flaring. This is why spiked has always raised questions about the political response to the global pandemic.

With people unable to leave their homes or seek support from friends and relatives, there will undoubtedly be some increase in domestic abuse. Perhaps those so recently desperate for the government to go ever further in restricting people’s freedoms should have thought of this before taking to social media or banging out their Guardian columns. Panicking about domestic abuse now, and doing so off the back of dodgy stats taken out of all context, looks very much like a call for people’s homes to be policed with the same ruthless disregard for civil liberties as we see in public space.

The new panic reinforces the same fear of other people that is present in much of the discussion about coronavirus. Even while confined to their own homes, people are seen as a dangerous threat. As one columnist puts it: ‘We’re all at home, on the other side of the wall from these horrors.’ People, often portrayed simply as virus-spreaders, are discussed with contempt. In the eyes of many, humans are so debased we will either go out and spread coronavirus or we will remain at home and abuse our partners. This lack of trust in people means the most obvious solution to the stress lockdown places on personal relationships – turning a blind eye to those who need to take a second walk or go and sit on a park bench for half an hour – is lost in a growing hysteria.

Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and director of the think tank, Cieo.

Help spiked prick the Covid consensus

So here we are – 10 weeks into Britain’s three-week lockdown. We hope you are all staying sane out there, and that spiked has been of some assistance in that. We have ramped up our output of late, to provide a challenge to the Covid consensus. But we couldn’t have done that without your support. spiked – unlike so many things these days – is completely free. We rely on our loyal readers to fund our journalism. So if you enjoy our work, please do consider becoming a regular donor. Even £5 per month can be a huge help. You can donate here.Thank you! And stay well.

Ad Dam

Women are the most violent, not men. You want to worry about women? Tell them to stop hitting men, as sometimes the men hit back.

Claire D

13th April 2020 at 2:20 pm

Maybe it’s time to accept domestic violence is endemic in our society. The aggressor can be male or female. Bullying, mental health, money problems and social isolation all play a part. Playing one sex off the other is unhelpful and will get us nowhere. If we really want to sort it out instead of using it as a political or ideological football we need to be impartial and cool-headed. Is that possible ?

steve moxon

13th April 2020 at 4:29 pm

No, it’s not possible.
30+ years of voluminous research showing the feminist line is plain false has made no impression whatsoever on their anti-male hate-mongering.
The only way forwards is to attack feminists head-on with the truth: that domestic violence is predominantly, indeed overwhelmingly a phenomenon of female perpetration and male victimhood.

Dave Jones

14th April 2020 at 2:07 am

I wish it were, but asking female perpetrated abuse to stop being concealed (and recognition of their male, female and juvenile victims) is considered blasphemy to almost every current DV activist. It is the equivalent of trying to get the Catholic Church in Ireland to recognise paedophilia, probably harder than getting the BBC to acknowledge the accusations against Sir Jimmy Saville, harder than getting Labour to recognise the grooming gangs in their council wards. This will take decades, and the generational cycle of abuse will continue – with a growing number of victims of this concealed scourge on society. But it may become to big to hide eventually. It was easier when all the activist-space was open, as Erin Pizzey found, though she was soon seen as a heretic for being truthful about abusive men as well as abusive women, sent death threats etc. hounded out of the UK to America. This is the level of “making the personal political” we’re up against. Abusive women covering/gas-lighting for abusive women. At least no-one other than the abusive men themselves covers for abusive men, and it would be a national scandal if it were discovered. Yet all the evidence of female abuse cover up is covered up in exactly the way outlined in the research. See Dr Murray Strauss “30 years of denying the evidence on gender symmetry”, or Erin Pizzey’s catalogue of how the DV support movement was taken over. This may take decades yet..

steve moxon

12th April 2020 at 10:08 pm

Joanna Williams has a totally false understanding of domestic violence, as she does of most things male/female.
Victims are predominantly if not overwhelmingly MALE; especially re serious violence. It is usual female behaviour but aberrational for males. Crime figures distort the reality beyond recognition. Males UNDER-report compared to females even in anonymous survey and even after rigorous measures to exclude all ‘demand characteristics’ (Archer, 1999), never mind to police to log a crime. The sex differential is by up to an order of magnitude (Stets & Straus, 1990) [!]: even the ONS (2014) concedes it’s x3. For 30 YEARS the scientific consensus has been ‘gender symmetry’ but even this is a sop to feminists, in that the data shows greater FEMALE perpetration. For example and notably, the comprehensive literature reviews across all sample types by Desmarais et al (2012), of worldwide and even clinical samples (Esquivel-Santoven˜a, Lambert & Hamel, 2013), and, ironically, in data from the USA National Violence Against Women Survey (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). Males ‘hold back’ whereas females are uninhibitedly violent specifically in a couple context (Cross, Tee & Campbell, 2011; Cross & Campbell, 2012). How and why is now solidly outlined and supported by multiple lines of evidence. Many new holistic dyadic studies show females overwhelmingly the perpetrators and usually unilaterally so, or very one-sidedly. Eg, Hines, Straus & Douglas (2020), Reyes, Foshee, Chen & Ennett (2019), Burk & Seiffge-Krenke (2015), Johnson, Giordano, Manning & Longmore (2015), Wincentak, Connolly & Card (2017), Leonard, Winters, Kearns-Bodkin, Homish & Kubiak (2014) … See my forthcoming paper ‘How & Why Partner Violence is Usual Female Behaviour but Aberrational for Males’.

Louise Joyce

13th April 2020 at 3:42 am

Thank you Steve. But you actually haven’t listened or paid attention to a single word I’ve said. You’ve simply gone off on one on your own agenda and have judged both me and my viewpoint in order to propogate your own vexatious diatribe.

First, I think it’s pretty clear if anyone blindly hates any gender here it’s you who hates women. It’s pretty clear from these posts and others you have left.

Second, you have completely and utterly missed my point. Can’t be helped, But try calming down and seeing how a piece of writing can be nuanced and you might see past your own braying, howling dogma.

Let me educate you a little :

1. I am not actually a bra burning feminist. I’m fine with having my arse slapped, being called ‘love’, doing all the washing ironing and cooking in a household, being leered at, jeered at, whistled at, and yes …. even physically assaulted as per my story. My only requisite is that the guy had better understand I’ll Shrink his dick to nothing if he does the former with malice and on the assault part he’d better kill me because if I get back up off the floor he’s dead meat.

2. I have not denied at any point that women are more likely to be a victims than men. Please show me the section that says so. I will be waiting rather among time as it doesn’t exist.

That said, having not looked at all the evidence I also cannot and am not prepared to agree with your comments that men are more likely to be victims. I would need time to study the data. One thing is that it’s quite clear you’re on a gut busting mission to prove men are more likely to be victims and I have a feeling your mind is completely closed to any other possibility so I won’t waste my time by exerting such diligence in finding out.

3. I have merely spoken of male on female violence and in the context of my own experiences. I discuss how I feel a woman should deal with it. I don’t deal with female on male violence unless provoked. This isn’t what I was attempting to discuss. This is what YOU’RE attempting to discuss. And that’s fine. Good luck to you and your woman hating agenda. But please just keep to the programme of my thread and concentrate on what I’m conveying, responding appropriately and accordingly if possible.

4. You offer lots of seemingly relevant statistics and references to academic studies that read rather well but your response lacks sagacity. It’s just overly peppered with study after study without sound judgement or extrapolation or particularLG succint understanding on your part. With respect Steve, you’re just ranting.

5. I don’t hate men, so please don’t judge me. Nothing I’ve said indicates I hate men. I adore men. I spend most of my time in male company. By choice. I prefer working with men. I prefer men as friends. 90% of my social circle are men. My piece simply states if a man wants to throw a shot at a woman, being physically advantaged he had better be prepared to get hit back and that’s fair enough. Men who attack women are bullies. That is literally ALL I was saying and none of that indicates I’m a man hater or any such tosh. Your invective talks about a totally different issue and is simply not relevant to what I was trying to say. My only point is come at me physically and I’ll likely break you. End of. So don’t do it. What’s so wrong with that? Are you afraid of strong women? I think there maybe issues here….

You really need to learn to listen Steve. Ranting like a accusatory mad man is neither intelligent nor helpful to a discussion. Please try harder.

steve moxon

13th April 2020 at 7:01 am

Ah the meezodgenannynonny nonsense again, followed by zero content.
Everyone will have stopped reading after your line four.
See: Misognyny has no scientific basis of any kind: the evidence is of of philogyny — and misandry. New Male Studies 7(2), 26-42.
Abstract.
No published science paper demonstrates misogyny exists. Data on both implicit and explicit gender attitudes shows males substantially favouring females – philogyny – or, at worst, gender neutrality. This is hidden by elision with the wider notion of sexism; but there’s no evidence for hostile sexism, and hypothesised benevolent sexism is fatally flawed in operational definition. The mode whereby sexism supposedly causes harm — stereotyping (stereotype threat) — has been debunked; likewise inter-sexual dominance, removing any theoretical basis. Possible male harm by control is belied in women being found the controlling party. Misogyny / sexism in being defined circularly is unfalsifiable, therefore non-scientific conceptualisation: ideology itself actually hostile sexism (misandry, which is shown to be real but unseen).

Louise Joyce

12th April 2020 at 3:54 pm

I think everyone is missing the point here frankly and it absolutely staggers me how anyone can start running around shouting “It’s a disgrace and these women will be in danger!” just because Covid-19 has turned up. These women are in danger full stop and shouldn’t be in a house with a man who’s handy with his fists unless they’re both happy to have her clout him back, as I did the two and only times I experienced it. And trust me they remained the ONLY times either perpetrator tried that stunt.

Panicking about this stuff because of Covid basically says we’re fine with it at any other time. It’s nonsensical. Great Western Railway are now issuing free tickets to ladies freeing domestic abuse like it’s some kind of new phenomenon. Are we in a parallel universe? Further, I can never understand why it’s always the woman who’s expected to flee? Surely the trick is to get the man to leave? I would gladly take courses in schools teaching our young women that empowerment does not lie in running away, but fronting it and giving it a bit of “Come on then, let’s ‘ave ya!” Stick the kids in a bedroom and take a chair to his head. Job done.

I just cannot understand why women put up with it. Fair enough we can’t all be Boudiccas on a flaming chariot from hell, but we could at least teach our young women to develop such traits. The only way to deal with it in giving as good as you get not crumbling onto the floor in a snivelling quivering wreck.

I recall the first attempt on my life was by some berk who tried to lock me in a wardrobe then push me down the stairs for allegedly “flirting with another man” (with whom I was actually only engaging in polite conversation). The other threw me across the room then attempted to bite my face off and strangle me. The first received a chair over his head (as instructed above), followed by the kitchen bin, which I did for good measure as it was rather full at the time so he regretted not emptying it earlier that day when I asked him to. I have the second a broken nose, but only after he had a large cafetiere smashed over his head (he was 6ft 3 and 16 stone, I am 5ft 7 and 9 stone).

Neither abuser stuck around, the shock alone that I had dared to physically retaliate was enough to send them both packing and I can tell you right now that the character of a man who does those things will absolutely not hang around when he’s given a bit back. They are GONE – trust me.

Evidently, they both thought they were going to get away with it but were very much mistaken and that’s the key here. I actually chased one down the road in his boxer shorts in the dead of the night as he tried to hot foot it away from me, and it was only by dint of luck that he got away as that a cab was driving past at the time which he managed to hop into. Luckiest night of his life.

We should be teaching our young women (and indeed anyone else susceptible to bullying) to fight back and stand up for themselves not disappear into a quagmire of victimhood, That’s the legacy of Boudicca, and like rapists domestic abusers thrive on the fear and control of the victim. I can assure you neither man ever even looked at me again let alone come near me. The only way to deal with a bully is to give them a bloody nose when required and trust me it stops abusive behaviour like this in its tracks. All this does require total conviction and self-belief on the part of the woman, which is of course what’s usually lacking.

On a more humorous note… in my humble experience fortunately men are rather like dogs and are actually quite simple creatures that can be trained in a similar way – a quick tap on the nose after a misdemeanour and jobs usually a good ‘un! 😉

Louise Joyce

14th April 2020 at 4:59 pm

All quoted studies and absolutely zero response to a single sentence I have written….rant rant rant rant. Yawn.

I bet lock down with you is about as fun as a night with the Kardashians on a make-up ban. Did you get clouted by some bird you really loved in your life and it’s left a very sore mark or do you just absolutely hate women and everything they stand for due to a more sinister or Freudian reason?

steve moxon

14th April 2020 at 5:30 pm

Guffaw!
I responded to your nonsense about men.
The reality of domestic violence overall is that men ‘hold back’ whereas women actively choose violence as their preferred mode of aggression in a couple context.
The minority of men who physically aggress are not normal, but in total contrast violence to a partners is normal female behaviour.
You try to pretend that anecdote trumps researched multiple lies of evidence.
It most certainly does not.

Claire D

13th April 2020 at 8:51 am

@Louise Joyce

I agree with you to some extent Louise, especially the sudden focus on domestic violence under Covid 19. On a personal level I sympathise with your fight back attitude when faced with aggression . . . of any kind, but I think your approach is too superficial to be of any use realistically. Most women are not interested in getting into a fight, particularly once they have children to protect. And your experience completely leaves out the feelings of love and loyalty that many sufferers of both sexes feel towards their partners. I just think it is much more complicated than your comment implies.

On a humorous note of my own, in the Middle Ages, and beyond, there was a tradition for communities to gather round the homes where spouses were known to be violent and bang pots and pans and on doors and windows in an effort to make it stop. Maybe that is a hint of a fundamental part of the problem, ie, that there is too little community in our society, we are too shut away into little isolated units.

Louise Joyce

14th April 2020 at 5:25 pm

Hi Claire,

Thank you for your comment. It is appreciated.

I will say though I am not sure how my approach could not be of use? I would ask you if you have ever suffered from bullying? I have. Ten friends’ kids have, and I can assure you when faced with a kid in the playground who comes bounding up to you that has thus only run away from you makes for a complete change in behaviour, although this tends to work when the perpetrator is alone I admit. This is human nature, you don’t stop bullying or violence by letting people get away with it, so I just cannot see how this doesn’t affect things? I know of nobody who has been inspired by my endeavours and experiences who have then chosen to replicate the that have come off worse or have continued to have been bullied. Not a single one. Although I totally admit not everyone has the same character and I have been described as ‘intimidating’ by British Army Colonels so you have a point that in practice not everyone can exert this!

My point is more that we have to stop teaching our young women or those more vulnerable to shrivel and cry. We have to teach them to toughen up or they will always be a target – it’s as simple as that. There is nothing superficial about it, it’s just dealing with nature and behaviour and you don’t get a rook attacking an angry lion. The rook knows better not to mess. The current zeitgeist for over-reacting to male aggression is also not what I mean we need to do, again, this makes victims out of women.

You are right that most women don’t want to get into a fight, but it’s a bit late for that when they’re already in one. I’ve been there and I am afraid it’s fight or flight at that moment, you don’t have time to get all touchy-feely ‘love thy abuser’ about it. But again that is not the point. If she wants to stay with him because she loves him she has to show him she will and can fight back to stop him doing what he’s doing. It’s as simple as that. The fact she doesn’t ‘want’ to get into a fight has no bearing – she’s in one whether she likes it or not. There’s no good bemoaning the fact she doesn’t want to be she simply has to make a decision as to how she’s going to deal with it.

She also has a duty to her children not to let this continue and to show them that women will not be treated like this – domestic abuse beats domestic abusers and so the circle continues. Having seen it as a child, again, I have some experience.

On the part about leaving out the feelings of love and loyalty that many sufferers of both sexes feel towards their partners – again I do not contest that, but if that’s the case what are we saying women should do? Take it? Why should a woman have any feeling whatsoever for a man who tried to kill her? I’m afraid for most love and loyalty stop there, although in my own experience I stopped short of reporting or prosecuting him BUT I did fight back.

Women have to decide what they want, to sort it out and stop him doing it or carry on taking it, but be under no illusion they cannot have both. Again, I am not sure whether you have ever been through this but I can say now that you really have to to make a decision about what you want and those decisions will be tough. When your life is on the line you don’t have time to pussy-foot around how much you love him, you sort it out and deal with it or you leave.

I don’t attempt to make out this is not a complex issue – you are right in what you say when you say it’s complicated. Again, I have been there and perjured myself to protect him as I knew what a loser he was and didn’t go as far as ruining him, but we can make this far more simple as women by taking no sh1t and that starts with “Hey pal – you won’t be raising your hand to me. This is what you get if you do. Understand?” I cant reiterate enough how much that works when said with conviction and self-belief. If a woman hasn’t got the nerve or balls to try it then I am afraid we much teach them. It is our moral duty as older women to empower and teach self-protection rather than treating women to become defenceless victims and cry-babies who make excuses for abusers on the basis that we “love” them.

Pots and pans! Great idea but as you say people don’t generally give a toss about anyone else any more. We would probably be better bringing the stocks back. A few bags of dog excrement and rotten vegetables or better still a quick bit of Pulp Fiction style ‘Gimp’ treatment would sort them out…humiliating and belittling a bully rarely fails because it gives them a taste of their own medicine.

steve moxon

15th April 2020 at 12:20 am

Come again?!
Women, far from needing to be taught defence, actively choose physical violence as their preferred mode of aggression against partners.
They INITIATE violence.
By complete contrast, men ‘hold back’ and usually don’t respond to female violence, or try to restrain them. Only mentally disordered or very disinhibited males engage in domestic violence.

Linda Payne

19th April 2020 at 11:31 am

My mother and myself were victims of a violent bully, I had 13 years of it from aged 9 until I finally left home at 21, neither of us fought back and I hate myself for that nearly every day. Both of us were labelled as having psychiatric disorders, medicated and sectioned. My mother died at 54 ; he is still alive at 85, My sisters have cut me off on his instigation when I called out his ongoing emotional abuse of us all, I have not seen any of them or my neices and nephews for over 10 years, moral of the tale FIGHT BACK!

Dave Jones

11th April 2020 at 4:05 am

How on earth did we get to projecting “including men” as victims as some form of “political correctness”, with “those activists so quick to tell us”??
It’s been “politically correct” wisdom for decades that only men are perpetrators, or the only one’s worth castigating… and that it’s almost exclusively women that are victims, or worthy of support. It’s one of the corrections to “political correctness” in recent years, against the hegemony of the tribal, dogmatic victim-status seeking feminist establishment – the breaking down of their neo-liberal gatekeeping – that has actually made the vastly underreported/concealed problem of male victims/any victim of female perpetrators (including women and children) .. cease to be concealable any more. It’s become almost self evident. Speak to almost any man, most will know a male victim, if not one himself, most women know the truth too, the ones that aren’t hiding their own abusive behaviour.

And how on earth can you conclude that when women now tend to leave the home and gain more independence, and then we observe rates of domestic abuse going down, this shows that it’s because they’re being less *victimised*? This shows that as women have gained autonomy, and have less of a need to control their partners through abuse, to get the control they always wanted – we observe rates of abuse dropping as a result. Sure, some women might have been able to escape being a victim through independence, but many men will have been able to escape abuse because his partner is at work/more content. Clearly, the propensity to abuse is increased when people feel they don’t have the control over their lives/financial security – and when power/autonomy/freedom is increased, people are less likely to abuse. Nothing like the politically correct dogma that states the only people that abuse are “the powerful”, people doing it to abuse their already dominant power. In general it’s weak people who abuse (they’re far more likely to feel like they need to), and it always has been, and we all knew this before feminism tried to re-write the book. And women have always more than played their part in that abuse. And it’s great that it’s finally being recognised, but disappointing to see rear guard actions like this cropping up in once “subversive” magazines.

I’ve seen men and women be victimised by members of their family. Male and female perpetrators. Women killed by abuse, from women.
Those of the “politically correct” feminist male-perpetrator/female-victim only slant have allowed the cycle of abuse to continue. Institutionally covered-for/excused/concealed female abusers, so often still free to terrorise their families and children (which only now, pushed, they pretend to want to treat, provided they continue to control the narrative), concealed abusive women that have continued to create the abusive men and abusive women of tomorrow. Like so many activist establishments that need a problem to treat, and find ways to allow it to continue on their terms, lest the disease that pays their mortgages be cured. Fortunately, no-one conceals abusive men other than the attempts by those abusive men themselves. Certainly no activist establishments do, unlike for abusive women, and their victims. Which keeps the scourge going in society, that only they must be allowed to diagnose and treat, or be recognised as the ones with the answers. Backed up by almost all gender “grievance studies” scholars allowed to publish any information on the subject, propping up their long corrupted institutions, with revolving doors from these parts of academia. (except a few kind, honest researchers like Dr Murray Strauss, Dr Liz Bates, and Erin Pizzey herself, treated as heretics for not complying with concealing the truth, and despite Pizzey founding the movement)
Only those that have seen men and women abuse, male and female victims are actually capable of concern for all victims, and actually treating this scourge on society. Spiked should resist the continuation of this tribal, dogmatic corruption, not see it enter into a new “subversive” language of “men just shutting up and taking it/not complaining” as they have been expected to do for decades under feminist “political correctness”. Feminist backpedalling on the issue of male victims/abusive women is evident in recent years, but we’re not there yet. Truth doesn’t care about ideology, and it is slowly coming out, despite feminism so desperately trying to fight these rear guard actions.

Claire D

11th April 2020 at 9:19 am

Great comment.

Ness Immersion

11th April 2020 at 1:21 am

I’m afraid that in the Victimhood poker game of our feral press, Wilkins must lose to OURNHS.
Nothing can be allowed to challenge the mantra that we must stay home to save the NHS.
It is wrong think to have the idea that the NHS is there to save you after you have spent 40 years paying for it.
No – that is the job of continental insurance led healthcare. OURNHS exists to be uncritically worshipped and if the domestic murder rate doubles, we’ll just mark those deaths as Coronavirus related as well.

Claire D

9th April 2020 at 5:03 pm

According to the Office of National Statistics, in the 2 years between April 2016 and March 2018 :

In the murders of the females 260 of the suspects were male, 10 were female.

In the murders of the males 50 of the suspects were male, 46 were female.

steve moxon

10th April 2020 at 5:14 pm

But the stats don’t support the feminist case. The calculated predicted sex-differential in partner-murder is as for injury, roughly 20:1 female:male [Dixon 2012], and not only is there nothing like that sex-differential in the recorded data – almost half of police-recorded spousal murder victims are men [Ferguson 2003] – but many or more likely most male victims are missing from the data, because of a combination of the hard-to-detect modes employed by wives and police recording conventions. Whereas husbands who murder their wives often do so without attempting to conceal the crime – not least in a fit of rage and/or in conjunction with suicide — this is much less the case for wives who murder their husbands, given female indirect aggression styles serving female goals to maintain the remainder of the family otherwise intact, posthumously funded by the husband’s assets. As is well-known, wives tend to murder either by proxy – a lover, male friend, male relative or hired ‘hit-man’ — or by subterfuge (classically by disguised poisoning or contrived accident); in both cases in effect assisted by pro-female / anti-male prejudice allaying suspicion. The subterfuge often will be successful, but even when detected, the third-party cases are recorded either as being both perpetrated and instigated by the third-party male, or – and even if the wife is found to be implicated – as a ‘multiple-offender’ killing without reference to a wife (this in the USA) [Farrell 1999]. Thus is mariticide under-counted to the likely extent of a small fraction of what would be the actual total. The disjuncture between data and prediction in respect of parter-murder may be considered further widened by including PV-related suicide, at least some of which can be attributable to female partner’s violence/ abuse. Taking all PV-related deaths together, then even on the wholly inadequate official data, the total number of male deaths well exceeds that for females [Davis 2010].

Claire D

11th April 2020 at 8:59 am

Thank you Steve, your expanding reply was needed after the statistics I put up.
The trouble is many people will look at the stats, be familiar with the feminist gobbledegook and think that one confirms the other, but as I have commented further down feminist ideology does the problem of domestic violence no favours whatsoever. Human beings are complicated, the feminist and post-modernist approach of seeing everything in terms of power relations is inherently undermining of a healthy and happy society.

Claire D

11th April 2020 at 9:15 am

I also think that there may be a greater difference between the causes of domestic homicide and domestic violence than a casual observer might assume. Dixon’s approach of ‘gender inclusion’ (unbiased re: gender) rather than ‘gendered’ (one sex against the other) sounds a more promising way forward.

steve moxon

10th April 2020 at 5:19 pm

AND YET MORE DUMB CENSORSHIP ON THIS SITE PREVENTING ERUDITE REPLY, EVEN AFTER ** ANY POSSIBLE WORDS SUBJECT TO FILTERING..

steve moxon

10th April 2020 at 5:25 pm

[My full comment hopefully pending. The great majority of male victims here are hidden (subterfuge or by proxy — third-party agents), whereas female victimisation is usually overt. The predicted sex-differential based on differences in upper body strength, frame weakness and body size is 20:1 female:male (See the forensic psychologist, Linda Dixon). So the reality is likely far more female perpetration.

michael savell

8th April 2020 at 10:48 pm

Seems strange that feminists tell us that there are a myriad of FLR’s now;ie;female led relationships.
This may or may not be the case but one thing is for certain,women are still obtaining “victim” status for it while they are relatively unaffected by the virus and husbands are dropping dead at their feet.Don’t they ever feel any shame?

Kim Julia44

8th April 2020 at 8:39 pm

If You Are On A Lookout For A Way To Earn Your First Dollar Online You Can Stop Searching!. Start Now With This Award Winning Program And Receive Your First Paycheck Within A Week!Find out more here……. wwwWORKS46.com

Anna Billy

8th April 2020 at 6:30 pm

MeetLocals is an online dating site that is connecting users that are looking for casual dates, intimate hookups, friends with benefits or just someone to flirt with for fun.Read More

Jim Lawrie

8th April 2020 at 5:31 pm

Years ago in an argument with my partner and her friends in a pub, there ensued a terse silence between the men and women at the table. To break the tension of this Mexican standoff, I growled at her “You wait till I get you HOME”. Unbeknown to me, one of the women phoned the police and made up all sorts about me, resulting in them attending at my house. My partner sent them away. A few weeks later with the same group of women, she voiced a “well done” for whoever had phoned the police. When the busybody stepped forward to bask in glory, my partner bust her nose.

There are plenty of good women out there.

Lyn Keay

8th April 2020 at 3:54 pm

I like to think that domestic violence is down, not just because of the practical ways that women have more freedom, but because of the wider social view that women are equal to men. That it is no longer acceptable for men to beat the women they share their lives with.

I find it far more plausible that people with dodgy tempers will punch holes in the wall that will start beating their partners. And, for those that do beat their partners more due to the tensions, I don’t think a jog in the park is going to solve their problems for more than a few hours.

I hope spiked has raised questions about the political response to this global pandemic because of more fundamental reasons that that it can lead to tensions mounting & tempers flaring.

This article starts well, but then it strays far too close to the line that we might all turn into domestic abusers if we are denied that extra jog in the park.

Mark Houghton

8th April 2020 at 8:16 pm

You do realise that men are also victims of domestic violence?

Lyn Keay

9th April 2020 at 1:36 pm

I do indeed. You will notice that the paragraphs in my reply that talk about today’s situation do not mention the sex of the people involved. The first paragraph which discusses why violence today is less that it was previously does mention sex, because there has been a decline in male on female violence.

steve moxon

8th April 2020 at 9:49 pm

Evidently you have a totally false understanding of domestic violence.
Victims are predominantly if not overwhelmingly MALE; especially re serious violence. It is usual female behaviour but aberrational for males. Crime figures distort the reality beyond recognition. Males UNDER-report compared to females even in anonymous survey and even after rigorous measures to exclude all ‘demand characteristics’ (Archer, 1999), never mind to police to log a crime. The sex differential is by up to an order of magnitude (Stets & Straus, 1990) [!]: even the ONS (2014) concedes it’s x3. For 30 YEARS the scientific consensus has been ‘gender symmetry’ but even this is a sop to feminists, in that the data shows greater FEMALE perpetration. For example and notably, the comprehensive literature reviews across all sample types by Desmarais et al (2012), of worldwide and even clinical samples (Esquivel-Santoven˜a, Lambert & Hamel, 2013), and, ironically, in data from the USA National Violence Against Women Survey (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). Males ‘hold back’ whereas females are uninhibitedly violent specifically in a couple context (Cross, Tee & Campbell, 2011; Cross & Campbell, 2012). How and why is now solidly outlined and supported by multiple lines of evidence. Many new holistic dyadic studies show females overwhelmingly the perpetrators and usually unilaterally so, or very one-sidedly. Eg, Hines, Straus & Douglas (2020), Reyes, Foshee, Chen & Ennett (2019), Burk & Seiffge-Krenke (2015), Johnson, Giordano, Manning & Longmore (2015), Wincentak, Connolly & Card (2017), Leonard, Winters, Kearns-Bodkin, Homish & Kubiak (2014) … See my forthcoming paper ‘How & Why Partner Violence is Usual Female Behaviour but Aberrational for Males’.

Miles Plastic

8th April 2020 at 3:34 pm

‘Hell is other people’ seems. More liberal misandry rubbish. Men pushed over the edge by women who have been indoctrinated by feminism to hate men. Imagine being locked in with Harriet Harman or Stella Creasey right now. It would be like being in the first circle of Hell.

James Knight

8th April 2020 at 1:25 pm

This lockdown makes me feel like I may be in a “controlling and coercive relationship”.

Is there a government helpline I can call?

Mark Houghton

8th April 2020 at 1:28 pm

I’m being controlled and coerced. By the goverment.

Christopher Tyson

8th April 2020 at 1:17 pm

‘It’s incredible that some commentators need campaigners and statistics to tell them this…’

This needs its own article. As a society we have become in thrall to data and measuring, everything has to be evidence-based, and when we talk about evidence we means statistics and data. The danger is that managers and policy makers become pre-occupied with ‘the figures’ but there is a breach between the figures and the reality.
It’s hard to argue against because you’ll come across as someone who makes decisions and pronouncements without evidence. However others means of knowing are diminished, such as years of experience, anecdotal evidence, realising that you are hearing the same story from different sources, even journalism or art or narrative, different ways of learning and understanding what is going on.
Against evidence, we can see that the demand for evidence may provide an excuse to delay or avoid action. Common sense, communal wisdom, personal experience, of course alone these thing may be unreliable, but they may also alert us to what needs further examination.
There seems to be an idea that ‘science’ is the only knowledge that counts, the definition of ‘science’ is itself contestable, but the current idea of science seems to be about the analysis of data and information, which is itself a narrow idea of what science is.

Lyn Keay

8th April 2020 at 4:14 pm

Definitely worth more than one article. Some really interesting thoughts there. I just wonder if you aren’t moving towards throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Data, statistics and science are a significant part of what has got us the dizzying heights of civilization that we now live in. If I were to fall ill I would far rather be treated by a medical doctor using the latest treatment from a good scientific trial than by a homeopath. The science, keen observation and many years of experience are combined in the doctor, rather than being at odds.

steve moxon

8th April 2020 at 6:46 pm

There is less than zero science in Women’s Aid and all the rest of the NGO and governmental total disinformation about domestic violence. Most DV is BY WOMEN, and it’s not by a small margin, but by multiples, and this is especially so re serious violence.

Vivian Darkbloom

8th April 2020 at 10:09 pm

Thank you Christopher; I always enjoy your comments. I reckon you’re on the money when you talk about the way data has become the end rather than the beginning of discourse. I’ve been mulling over certain figures. In the last great UK influenza epidemic 2017-18 there were c.26,000 lost souls. In 2014-15 there were c.28,000. So far, we are told the coronavirus has claimed over 7,000 victims.

Can we look deeper into these data? How many have died FROM the virus and how many WITH the virus? A number of sites are questioning the methodology and, of course, it’s an ongoing event, but if the data are being manipulated then so are we. 10,000 people die every week in this country, more-or-less every week of the year, year in and year out. How many of those, who would have expired regardless of Covid-19, have been added to the death toll? In the summing-up of this epidemic and its attendant morbidity rates, what if the toll is LESS than seasonal flu outbreaks (which clearly it is at this moment)? Of course, they’ll tell us that the curfew has worked, and this might very well be true. But we’ll never really know and the onward march of the therapeutic state and its attendant biopower will continue.

You have raised a very interesting point which requires much more attention than it has received so far.

Claire D

8th April 2020 at 12:23 pm

Williams’ supposition that the small reduction in Domestic Violence figures between 2005 @ 2.7 million, and 2018-19 @ 2.4 million is due to women suddenly getting access to bank loans, benefits and credit cards is ridiculous. Women had access to all these things for decades before 2005.
It’s good that the figures are falling but there is a lot of obfuscation around the whole subject of Domestic Violence as a result of feminist myth-making and prejudice against the idea of female perpetrated violence. Violence against men does seem to be acknowledged more now,which is also good but none of this takes into consideration the involvement of mental health problems, ie, the subtle psychological games that couples can play with each other of provocation leading to abuse. It is a seething cauldron of complexity.
By turning it into a battle between the sexes instead of a relationship problem between two responsible adults, feminists have seriously undermined an unbiased, fair and objective way forward for years. I hope that is changing.

steve moxon

8th April 2020 at 12:59 am

It’s all feminist man-hating.
In fact, domestic violence victims are mainly male, especially re serious violence. Males under-report compared to females even in anonymous survey and even after rigorous measures to exclude all ‘demand characteristics’ (Archer, 1999), never mind to police to log a crime. The sex differential is by up to an order of magnitude (Stets & Straus, 1990) [!]: even the ONS (2014) concedes it’s x3. For 30 years the scientific consensus has been ‘gender symmetry’ but even this is a sop to feminists, in that the data shows greater female perpetration. For example and notably, the comprehensive literature reviews across all sample types by Desmarais et al (2012), of worldwide and even clinical samples (Esquivel-Santoven˜a, Lambert & Hamel, 2013), and, ironically, in data from the USA National Violence Against Women Survey (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). Males ‘hold back’ whereas females are uninhibitedly violent specifically in a couple context (Cross, Tee & Campbell, 2011; Cross & Campbell, 2012). How and why is now solidly outlined and supported by multiple lines of evidence. Many new holistic dyadic studies show females overwhelmingly the perpetrators and usually unilaterally so, or very one-sidedly. Eg, Hines, Straus & Douglas (2020), Reyes, Foshee, Chen & Ennett (2019), Burk & Seiffge-Krenke (2015), Johnson, Giordano, Manning & Longmore (2015), Wincentak, Connolly & Card (2017), Leonard, Winters, Kearns-Bodkin, Homish & Kubiak (2014) … See, forthcoming ‘How & Why Partner Violence is Usual Female Behaviour but Aberrational for Males’.

Dominic Straiton

8th April 2020 at 6:46 am

You forgot to mention that the group with the highest levels of domestic violence are lesbians.

Danny Rees

8th April 2020 at 8:59 am

But the feminists never talk about that. They don’t talk about domestic violence in LGBT relationships. Because their main target is men.

steve moxon

8th April 2020 at 12:27 pm

Yes, it’s indeed further evidence. It’s inherent in my point about how females behave within couples. With not one but two females in a lesbian couple, then both parties will prefer violence as their mode of aggression, causing a spiral upwards. Much higher IPV among lesbians is well-known, so I assumed readers would be aware. Tthere are lots of lines of evidence here, which would take a long paper to present.

Louise Joyce

13th April 2020 at 3:46 am

Exactly. But Mr Moxon won’t want to extrapolate the statistics that far because it won’t propogate his agenda …..

Sounds to me like he fell in love with a crazy chick and got his ass kicked. And now he’s just a leeeeetle bit bitter about it. I would be too. But it doesn’t give anyone the right to give a half- story statistical bias as the basis of their argument.

steve moxon

13th April 2020 at 7:07 am

Huh? as I replied, the data re lesbians could not better support my case!
Poor old Joyce has got no argument whatsoever, so as usual ‘projects’ her own deficiencies and plies the ad hominem.
Absolutely pathetic.

Danny Rees

8th April 2020 at 8:58 am

Feminists hate men but you seem to believe that any attempt to raise awareness of and help female victims of domestic violence is “man hating”.
And who cares what gender the victims are? We should help all regardless.

steve moxon

8th April 2020 at 9:42 am

?! It’s not females who need help: females are the perpetrators, often falsely accusing their male victims as cover for their own perpetration; and they have all of the provision for help, males none.
The way to help everyone here — all genuine victims — is to fight against the deliberately false feminist model of intimate partner violence. Misrepresenting the nature of intimate partner violence as feminists do — as they have persuaded everyone to do — is as fundamentally obscene as falsehood gets.

Mark Houghton

8th April 2020 at 10:46 am

When I pointed out to my ex-GF that the ONS figures showed that men were often victims of domestic violence she accused me of being ‘cocky’. She was dumped shortly thereafter.

steve moxon

8th April 2020 at 12:18 pm

Well done. Nobody needs those who buy the bull over common-sense and evidence. There’s no future in a relationship with someone dumb enough to be a feminst, either through conviction or useful idiocy.

Jonnie Henly

8th April 2020 at 12:31 am

“Perhaps those so recently desperate for the government to go ever further in restricting people’s freedoms should have thought of this before taking to social media or banging out their Guardian columns.”

Why, what effect do those posting on social media or writing Guardian columns have on Government policy?

Jimbob McGinty

8th April 2020 at 12:44 am

the wheel that squeaks loudest is the one thats oiled first

Jonnie Henly

8th April 2020 at 1:27 am

True, which would of course mean that the Guardian communists have much less influence than those at the Mail and Telegraph etc.

Gordon Le Gopher

8th April 2020 at 7:00 am

Then let’s just hope Keir Starmer never gets into power Jonnie.

Jonnie Henly

8th April 2020 at 12:05 pm

Nah, let’s hope for the opposite.

Ven Oods

8th April 2020 at 7:06 pm

I’m sure we all doubt that Guardian columns etc affect government policy. The point being made was ‘be careful what you wish for’.